Once in August, a person goes on a three-day vacation to replenish his collection of insects with rare species found in the sand. He takes the train to station S, transfers to the bus and, getting off at the final stop, goes on foot. He passes the village and goes a sandy road towards the sea. The road is getting steeper and nothing is visible around except the sand. A man thinks about sand: being interested in the insects that are found in it, he studied the literature on sand and made sure that sand is a very interesting phenomenon. Continuing his journey, he suddenly finds himself at the edge of a sand pit, at the bottom of which stands a shack. He sees the old man and asks him where to spend the night here. The old man, having previously ascertained that the newcomer is a teacher by profession, and not an inspector from the prefecture, leads him to one of the pits. A man goes down the rope ladder. He is warmly welcomed by a young woman, the mistress of a wretched shack. She feeds and watered the guest, but when asked if it is possible to wash, she answers that only the day after tomorrow they will bring water. The man is sure that the day after tomorrow he will not be here. “Really?” - the woman is surprised.
The shack is buried in the sand, the sand penetrates everywhere, and the woman holds a paper umbrella over the man's head when he eats so that the sand does not get into the food, but the sand is still felt in the mouth, creaks on the teeth, soaking later, the sand sticks to the body. The woman says that during last year's typhoon her husband and daughter fell asleep in the sand, so now she is completely alone. At night she has to scoop up sand so that the house does not fall asleep. Upstairs they know that a man has appeared in her house: another shovel and cans are lowered to her on a rope. The man still does not understand anything ...
A woman collects sand in cans, spills it near the place where the rope ladder hangs, then lower the baskets, and the cans rise up. It is easier to rake sand at night when it is wet, during the day it is so dry that it immediately falls off. A man helps a woman. A woman explains to a man that sand does not rest and does not give rest. The man is outraged: it turns out that the villagers live only in order to scoop up the sand. In his opinion, it’s ridiculous to live like that, this way of life, chosen voluntarily, does not even cause sympathy in him. He was unable to fall asleep for a long time, thinking about the sand and hearing how the woman continued to rake it. Waking up, he discovers that the woman is sleeping at the hearth completely naked, wrapping her face in a towel to protect herself from the sand.
The man wants to quietly leave, but sees that the rope ladder has disappeared: those who came to pick up sand at night took it away. The man feels trapped. It seems to him that some kind of mistake just happened.
The man begins to dig, but the sand immediately crumbles, the man continues to dig - and suddenly an avalanche of sand rushes down, which crushes it. He is losing consciousness. The woman is caring for him: he was probably ill because he worked for a long time in direct sunlight. He has been in the pit for a week now, probably his colleagues filed an application for his search. He imagines how they are discussing where he could disappear. A man pretends to be seriously ill: he wants both the woman and those who put him in this hole, finally assured that he is not an assistant for them, but a burden, and they themselves try to get rid of him. He can not understand the meaning of a woman’s life. He tells her how pleasant it is to walk, but she does not see in this joy: "Walking around idle - just get tired of nothing ..."
The man decides to make another attempt to get out of the pit. At night, when a woman scoops up sand, he suddenly pounces on her and binds.When people come with baskets and lower the rope into the pit, the man grabs her and demands that he be lifted if they want to help the woman. They begin to lift it, but soon they release the rope, and it falls to the bottom of the pit, and meanwhile they pull the rope from his hands and leave.
A bag with three packs of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka are lowered into the pit. The man hopes that this is the key to an early release. However, the woman explains to him that all men are given tobacco and vodka once a week. A man is curious if people like him, who have lost their way, have wandered into the village. The woman says that several people accidentally got into the village, one soon died, the other still lives, no one managed to escape. “I will be the first!” - says the man. Peering into the tank, the man sees that the water has run out. He understands: they did not bring her to break his resistance; woman’s torment does not bother anyone. A man frees a woman from the bonds with the condition that without his permission she will not pick up a shovel.
He grabs a shovel and hits the wall: he wants to destroy the house in order to make a staircase out of the wreckage. Seeing that the wall is rotten (it turned out that the woman was right when she said that sand is rotting wood), he decides to use not beams, but transverse beams for this purpose. A woman hangs on his arm and tries to pull out a shovel. The fight for the spade ends in a love scene. A man understands: hostility with a woman is useless, he can achieve something only in a good way. He asks her to contact those who bring water and tell her to be delivered immediately. The woman replies that as soon as they begin to work, they will find out about it at the top - someone always looks through binoculars from the fire tower - and then they will immediately bring water. A man takes a shovel. When a bucket of water is lowered to him, he tells the old man upstairs that his colleagues will be wanted and then those who forcibly keep him here will not be greeted. But the old man objects that since they did not find him in ten days, they will not find him in the future. The man promises his help in alleviating the situation of local residents, he has connections, and he can start a campaign in the press, but his words do not make any impression, the old man leaves without hearing.
In his free time, a man sneaks a rope. Having finished it, he attaches scissors to her instead of a hook and in the evening, when a woman falls asleep before night work, throws the rope onto the bags that serve as a pulley when lowering buckets of water and lifting baskets of sand. Scissors dig into the bag, and the man manages to get out of the pit. This happens on the forty-sixth day of his "imprisonment". To not be noticed from the fire tower, he decides to hide and wait until sunset. As soon as the sun sets, he needs to quickly go through the village - before the carriers of the sand baskets get to work. A man goes astray: thinking that he has passed a village, he suddenly finds it in front of him. He runs in fear through the village. Dogs rush after him. To protect themselves from them, a man twists a rope over his head with scissors at the end and touches the children who accidentally turn up.
In pursuit of a man the villagers rush. His legs suddenly become heavier and begin to bog down in the sand. Plunging into the sand almost to his hips, he begs the pursuers to save him. Three men, attaching boards to the soles, approach him and begin to dig sand around him. Pulling it out, they put it back into the pit. Everything that was before begins to seem to him a distant past.
October is coming. A woman will lower her beads and save up money for a down payment for a receiver. The man built a small canopy of polyethylene, so that during sleep they would not pour sand, and came up with a device for cooking fish in hot sand. He stops reading newspapers and soon forgets about their existence. A woman says that villagers secretly sell sand for a construction site at half the price.The man is indignant: after all, when the foundation or dam falls apart, it will become easier for anyone from the fact that the sand was cheap or even free. He is trying to negotiate with the carriers of sand about a walk; in return, they demand that he make love to the woman before their eyes. A woman refuses to do this with witnesses, but the man wants to get out of the pit so much that he pounces on her and tries to rape her. The woman resists. The man asks her to at least pretend, but she pounds him with unexpected force.
The man notices that water accumulates at the bottom of the barrel, which he wanted to use as a bait for crows. He reflects on the properties of sand over and over again. After a long, cruel winter, spring comes. A receiver appears in the house. At the end of March, the woman feels that she is pregnant, but after two months she has a miscarriage. She is taken to the hospital. The rope on which it is lifted from the pit remains hanging. A man goes upstairs, looks after the pickup truck taking the woman away. He notices that in the pit in the device for collecting water he made, the bar has moved away and is in a hurry to go down to fix the breakdown. A rope ladder is at his disposal, so there is no need to rush to escape.
Seven years after the man’s disappearance, an announcement appears about his search, and since no one responds to him, another six months later the court issues a decision to consider him dead.
